


(Un)finished melody

by jimmriarty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Established Relationship, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Suicidal Thoughts, Ten years after The Reichenbach Fall, but like really really angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:06:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4212507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jimmriarty/pseuds/jimmriarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Couldn't cope with an unfinished melody?"</p>
<p>Because everything, soon or later, has to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Un)finished melody

Being forty-five is a milestone that he didn’t expect to reach, not after a youth spent trying any type of substance that could soothe the unceasing noise of his brain. 

There are small wrinkles on the corner of Sherlock’s eyes, now. The first white hair appeared, candid strands of cloud that arrogant stand out on the mess of dark curls, as to make the passage of time even more clear. Despite the changes in his physical appearance, his life is still the same. He still lives at 211b, Mrs. Hudson keeps saying that she’s not his housekeeper and, even if he’s married, John hasn’t changed at all and never put him in second place, not even once. Lestrade and Molly got engaged – predictable, boring, a cliché worth of a romantic comedy – and Mycroft became even more annoying and unbearable, even if Sherlock didn’t think it was possible. His life is a succession of cases and everyday moments in the company of the people he loves – it’s still strange to admit it even to himself – in a routing that leaves a sweet taste on the lips and a warm feeling in the chest that Sherlock can almost associate with happiness.  
Almost.

There are times when he thinks that a life like that isn’t for him. He watches all his loved ones gathered in the same room, he hears them talking and telling jokes that aren’t funny and he can’t help but think that he doesn’t belong to that world. He observes John and Lestrade chatting and his first thought is that he would like to be anywhere else but there, listening to frivolities so superficial to make his head hurt.   
“I can be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for one second I am one of them” he said years before to Jim Moriarty and Sherlock notices how true the statement is even now. A life like that isn’t for him: no matter how effort he could put in it, he will never be able to blend with common people. They are two different kinds that will always remain separate, like oil and water. 

He accepted his condition decades ago: he was little more than a child when the truth hit him in the face, making him understand that his brain works differently from the one of the people around him.   
It was hard then. It was difficult living a childhood of loneliness and pain.   
At first he tried to blend, though. He hid his true nature in order to make some friends but it never really worked, because it doesn’t matter if a wolf disguises as a sheep, he will always be a wolf. It also must be said that he never managed to fake for too long: the more he tried to be someone else, the more the need of showing off increased, making him more annoying than ever. 

He was twentysomething when he realized that trying to change and hide was useless. At that point in his life, Sherlock tried to silence his mind and force himself to slow down.   
He discovered heroin and its embrace. The drug was able to give him (almost) all he needed: just before the needle was in his vein and the next moment a feeling of pure ecstasy intoxicated his entire body. Peace, lightness. At the time it seemed like paradise.

Everything changed after a withdrawal more violent than others. Vomit, pain, cold sweat, trembling limbs that didn’t respond to his will: Sherlock doesn’t need to go in his mind palace to relive what, without any doubt, was the worst night of his life. Maybe that’s why he became a control freak. Maybe. It’s hard to be sure. 

It took years and the help of Scotland Yard to keep heroin out of his life. Only replacing the dose with unsolved crimes and dangerous killers Sherlock was able to turn the page. More than once the headlines have painted him as a hero without blemish and without fear that saves lives because of kindness, but the truth is quite different. Giving justice to poor innocents is the only alternative to drugs.  
Sherlock would never admit it out loud, but he owes Lestrade more than he likes to think. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he’s only alive because, a winter day of many years before, Greg consulted him on one of the most difficult cases that Scotland Yard has ever found in their hand. Looking back, Sherlock realizes that he never asked Moriarty if he was behind the murder. Probably. He can’t think about anyone else clever enough to plan a crime of that size. It wouldn’t be the first time that, consciously or not, Jim helps him.   
Jim got inside him like a toxin. Chains and collars are no longer able to tie him up, the criminal now walks freely for every single room of his mind palace, the firm steps of who owns everything and the smile of who has every answer. Jim isn’t only in his brain: he’s in his soul, in his veins, in the blood that furiously pumps in the heart. 

When life oppresses him and even breathing seems superfluous, Jim contacts him and proposes a new game, a chat, a shag or all three together. He knows exactly what Sherlock needs even before the detective himself is aware of it.

When nothing seems to be enough and the world is too slow, Sherlock thanks a God who doesn’t believe in for the existence of Jim Moriarty.

******

He gets the text when he’s drinking tea with Mr. and Mrs. Watson.   
No greeting, no signature, no small ‘x’ that Jim uses to conclude the messages: the words that appear on the phone’s screen are just three. When he reads them, Sherlock’s heart skips a beat.

“You owe me.”

Without even grabbing his coat or giving an explanation, Sherlock gets up and closes the door of 221b behind him. His cup of tea will become cold. 

******

The wind of November is cold and sharp against his face, it’s made of a thousand pins that simultaneously pierce the skin. Sherlock almost doesn’t notice it. All he feels is the beating of his heart – a fiery drum that beats at the temples – and the sound of his own breath that accompanies the long steps. The legs move by themselves. It’s instinct that tells him where to go. 

His mind is wrapped around a single thought. 

“Jim, Jim, Jim.” 

******

He’s out of breath when he gets to their flat.   
It’s a hidden building, a small and nice house that no one would label as the home of the most famous criminal mind of the century and his lover. It’s a small corner of world that Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty, archenemies by nature, use as a “refuge” when everything becomes too much to bear and the need to be understood wins over everything else.   
Fingers intertwined, bodies that touch each other seeking that inexplicable "something" that can’t be found anywhere else, whispered confessions on hot skin; everything happened within those walls. That house is the only place where Sherlock can really be himself without being criticized, because in that flat there aren’t John’s judging glances, but only Jim’s eyes: big, warm, capable of true understanding. Sherlock has no doubt that, in a moment of weakness, Jim went there. Maybe it’s predictable, but he doesn’t blame him. He would have done the same. 

His hands tremble when he takes off the key he wears around his neck – too dangerous to keep it around 221b, too risky to lose sight of it even for one second, too pleasant feeling the cold metal on bare skin when he starts missing Jim – and puts it in the lock. It takes a couple of tries before the door opens. Sherlock tells himself that his hands are shaking because of the cold, but he knows he’s lying to himself. 

The flat has a modern and almost aseptic style, yet in Sherlock’s eyes looks warm and inviting.   
On the walls there are photos of stars and galaxies, star charts and diagrams depicting the orbits of the planets of the solar system: all objects dear to Jim that once Sherlock wouldn’t have given a second look. However, in the last years, he stared fascinated at them for whole minutes, fingers tracing constellations on Jim’s bare skin, lying naked next to him on the big couch.

There is also a small square table in the main room. They are able to spend hours in complete silence, Jim bent over an explosive that will blow up a few buildings and Sherlock on his microscope, analyzing some weird kind of substance. Despite the lack of words or physical contact, Sherlock has always found Jim’s company pleasing. There is something oddly comforting about spending time with someone who can understand your needs.

There are other rooms, other furniture able to tell stories that can’t be expressed by words – the language has not yet evolved to describe fully a relationship like theirs and probably never will – but Sherlock doesn’t pay attention to them, not now. 

His eyes are looking for Jim in a way that could be described as desperate. 

He finds him sitting on the floor, his back against the big leather couch. His hair is messy, he’s wearing a simple pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and his eyes are those of a person who has just spent the last minutes crying. 

Sherlock swallows hard. His gaze slips on Jim’s left hand. He isn’t holding any gun. Despite everything, he can’t help but sighs in relief. 

“It doesn’t make sense anymore.” Jim whispers and his voice is so flat, so uninflected that Sherlock can’t not worry. It’s almost paradoxical experience a feeling like that for the person who has sworn to burn your heart, but after all those years Sherlock has learned to understand and accept the wide variety of emotions that James Moriarty makes him feel.

“What?” He asks, lowering to sit next to him. 

"Everything.” Jim turns to look at him. Facing those big dark eyes – now empty and sad, without that glint somewhere between genius and madness that made him fall in love – Sherlock feels on the brink of a precipice. For a moment only, he’s afraid to fall. 

Time keeps passing and Jim doesn’t even blink. It’s only after a bunch of seconds that he talks again. 

"We both know how it will end if we don’t do anything to change it.” A small pause. Sherlock can’t figure out if the corners of Jim’s lips rose up or if it’s just his imagination. “I’ll put you in danger, you’ll fake your death, I’ll disappear for a couple of year and then I’ll return to London in secret. After the first months, we’ll begin to meet again and the cases that I’ll leave you will be interspersed with nights spent together. Full days, when the circumstances are favourable.”

"I don’t understand where the problem is.”

A sigh. Jim looks down for a moment.

“I can’t do this anymore, Sherlock.” Jim smiles openly now. The smile that is on his lips doesn’t reach his eyes. “I wanted to kill myself five years ago.”

The silence that falls is heavier than the precedent. It’s a silence full of suffering and memories that hurt more than a kick in the stomach, it’s a silence that makes breathing impossible and fills the mind with images that Sherlock tried to suppress in the deepest corners of his mind palace.   
A Browning L9A1 – ironic choice of the weapon, if only the whole situation hasn’t been so tragic, Sherlock would have found it almost funny – in his left hand. The barrel of the gun pressed against his temple with enough strength to leave a mark. It took days for the bruise to disappear altogether. In those days, Sherlock remembers he avoided Jim. 

"Why are we doing this?” He asks, voice now soft and low, a whisper that Sherlock would describe as lost and frightened if only didn’t came out Jim’s mouth. 

The answer is so simple that immediately leaves Sherlock’s lips.

"Because I need it.”

It’s the truth. It doesn’t matter how much he could care about Jim or if he has learnt to know, understand and perhaps even love him: Sherlock’s gestured and words are always dictated by a selfish impulse that they both pretend to don’t see. He knows that maybe he could help Jim in some way. He knows that, perhaps, interrupt their relationship is the right choice for both, because even if they were happy – and they were, really – it could never last forever. Sherlock knows all those things and yet pretends to don’t know, because he values his happiness a step above Jim’s, because the need to have the other by his side is so strong to overshadow everything else, because if only it was possible, Sherlock would hold Jim so close to erase the edges of their bodies. 

He can’t look at Jim. His blue eyes are fixed on the floor, now. 

“Everything is always about you, right? The great Sherlock Holmes, who always needs to be at the centre of atten-“

“Are you breaking up with me?” He still doesn’t dare to look up. Sherlock bites his lower lip hard enough to taste something metallic on the tip of his tongue. The pain can’t distract him. 

The weak laugh that comes out Jim’s lips is the saddest sound Sherlock has ever heard in his entire life. “God, no.” The crack in his voice is a crack on the most beautiful crystal sculpture of the world, is a broken string of a piano capable of play the sweetest of melodies. Jim laughs again. “No one in the world could ever make me happier than you’ve done.” For the first time since Sherlock walked in the flat that day, Jim does something. He moves closer, their shoulders touch barely and he places his hands on Sherlock’s face, forcing him to look at him.

“I’m asking you to kill me.”

If the silence before was a kick in the stomach, this one is a stab in the chest. Sherlock can physically feel a ghost knife tearing clothes and skin to penetrate deeply into his flesh. There aren’t any streams of blood flowing from the invisible wound and not a single scarlet drop stains Sherlock’s shirt, but the pain is real, so intense to erase everything else. 

“I can’t do it.”

The very idea is enough to make him feel sick. He remembers when one night woke up with heavy breathing and face wet with tears, he remembers how the first thing he did was check his own hands, he remembers the sigh of relief when he found out they weren’t covered in Jim’s blood.  
He can’t make his biggest nightmare true and real. 

“You owe me, Sherlock.” Jim is strangely calm. His voice is firm, but not hard.

“No.”

“Yes.” Jim’s lips are lifted in a small smile as he approaches further, Sherlock’s face still in his hands. The smile is softer and warmer this time, more genuine and human. It makes Sherlock want to cry and laugh at the same time. “I always wanted to die by your hands” He whispers and his words sound so true and sad that for a moment Sherlock thinks of giving him what he wants. The thought lasts less than a blink of the eye. 

“Not now… We could spend together some more years.” Sherlock’s voice leaves his mouth whinier that he would have expected. “Please.”  
The very moment he says those words, Sherlock realizes the absurdity and impossibility of them: if Jim has come to that point it means that he’s really at the limit. The situation just can’t get better. 

"Do you hate me so much? You want to make me suffer again?”

Sherlock grinds his teeth. His jawline becomes hard. “Don’t try to manipulate me.” He almost growls, staring at Jim. “Not now.”

“Sorry.”

In the big, deep dark eyes Sherlock now doesn’t see his own reflection, but instead the swirl of emotions Jim is feeling. Sadness, despair, the most absolute and utter need. For a moment he can almost feel them on his skin: they pass thought the skin and all the tissues and get to his soul. He can somehow understand what the other is going through. He and Jim are no longer two separate person, but they are rather a single entity that shares the same brain and the same heart, as if what they said years ago – that “I am you” that still resonates in Sherlock’s mind – has become real.  
He can feel Jim’s pain, the burden that he keeps carrying on his shoulders.

He made his choice. He knows he will regret it. 

Jim takes his hands in his, moving them so they are around his neck. Under his fingertips Sherlock can hear the other man’s heartbeat, a quiet and steady throb that like a clock seems to mark the little time they have left together. 

"All I want you to do is to choke me to death. It’s not the first time you take away someone’s li-“

“It’s not the same thing.” A tear, the first of many, slides down his cheek, making its way on the pale skin. Jim moves a little and catches it with his mouth. The contact with his soft lips makes Sherlock tremble. 

“No, it’s not.”

“Can I at least do it in some other way?”

It would be easier to shoot him between the eyes or stab him into the heart. It would be easier to kill him immediately. Sherlock could think about it as a mistake due to the intensity of the situation, a quick change of decision he made when he wasn’t really in himself: maybe, erasing the true meaning of the gesture, he could make the killing of the only person in the world capable to understand him a burden easier to carry. Maybe.

“No.” Jim holds his hands. “You owe me” He adds and Sherlock barely holds back a sob, because Jim is absolutely right, because after all they have shared he deserves an end worthy of the name, because if Jim really wants to die he could find another way to do it anyway, so Sherlock could just give him what he wants, if it could make him happy. “I want it to be personal. No guns, knives or pills, I want to feel your hands on my skin until the last second. Please. Don’t make me beg you.”

It’s impossible for Sherlock to hold back the tears, now. 

Without reassuring him or saying another word, Jim leans and puts his lips on Sherlock’s. It’s a light and delicate touch, a soft brush that Sherlock decides to turn into something more intense.   
He opens his mouth and kisses him more deeply: what was a chaste gesture has now become passionate and desperate. Their tongues meet eagerly, their teeth close around whatever they can find and, in the brief moments when their mouths are separate, the air is filled with moans and sobs in equal measure.  
It’s not just a kiss, it’s much more: it’s their goodbye, the way they thank each other for all the time they have spent together, it’s that “I love you” that in ten years never left their lips – partially because of their pride and partially because what was between them was never “love” in the conventional sense. It’s the last full stop on the last page of a book, it’s the end of a game that lasted decades, the end of a relationship that has no equal in the world and is the conclusion Sherlock started to fear the very moment their roads – once parallel and never meant to meet – have crossed.  
It’s the final note that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote on his deathbed.

Sherlock’s hands, clasped around Jim’s white neck, tighten their grip.

The kiss is over and when they lean back, Jim has a smile on his lips. It’s small and sincere, is a glimmer of light in all the darkness that surrounds him, is a ray of joy that creates an oxymoronic contrast with the way he is gasping for the lack of oxygen. Jim is dying – Sherlock’s fingers begin to shake at the thought – and yet he seems at pace like he wasn’t in months.

His lips move for the last time.

“See you in hell, Sherlock.” 

******

If it weren’t for the cold body and the purple bruises that mark his skin, Sherlock would think that Jim is sleeping. Only few times he saw him so quiet, free from the demons that made him wake up in the middle of the night, from the chains and the invisible weights that suffocated him daily, from the darkness that, especially in recent times, took possession of his eyes, making him unusually distant, isolated even from the only person he truly cared about. 

Sherlock can’t take his eyes off him. 

He watches his closed eyelids – it was him who closed them with trembling hands as soon as his body went completely numb – and observing the long dark lashes Sherlock can’t not think about all the times Jim looked at him from the bottom up while kneeling between his legs, arousal and desire clearly visible in his dilated pupils. 

His gaze slowly descends on the cheeks and this time Sherlock remembers the first (and only) day he saw them became red with a childish embarrassment that he didn’t think Jim was able to feel. It was when he confessed the nature of his feelings to Jim, he thinks distractedly, the corners of the lips that raise in a small smile. He remembers that he went around with a satisfied grin on his face for at least a week, because making James Moriarty, the most dangerous criminal mind in the world, blush was something incredible. 

He watches his lips now and the intensity of the thoughts is so big to physically hurt. He remembers all the threats hissed when things between them were beginning to fall apart, teeth clenched firmly around skin with the intention of bringing pleasure and pain at the same time, whispered confessions and small delicate kisses that talked so they didn’t have to. He remembers genuine laughter and true smiles, so different from his usual grin and so bright to become small suns in their own microcosm, so rare and precious that made Sherlock want to lock them up forever in a place invisible to the eyes of the world. 

His gaze lowers again and now Sherlock’s dry and burning eyes are forced to face dark bruises that mark the otherwise snow-white neck. It’s an image that takes his breath away and crumples his heart like a ball of paper made with an old copy of the Times. The bruises have the shape of his fingers and carry his signature: they are the irrefutable proof that Jim’s death is only his fault. They will haunt Sherlock for all his life. 

Sherlock sobs. He doesn’t know if, having the chances of going back, he would still do it. He doesn’t know if he could let Jim suffer only to have him by his side for a while.   
Without moving his eyes from Jim – is physically impossible to not look at him, his clear blue eyes are drawn to the body the same way a planet can’t not move around its star – he grabs his cell phone, laying on the small coffee table. He types a number he has memorized long time ago.

Mycroft answers after one ring.

“I need your help." Sherlock whispers and his voice cracks at the last syllables.

He was seven the last time he let himself being vulnerable in front of Mycroft.

******

There are days when Sherlock almost forgets that Jim is dead. When he’s solving some particularly difficult case or is with John it’s not hard to pretend that his phone will ring soon and that Jim is away from London just for a couple of weeks, but the illusion never last enough. It takes very little – a word from John, a smell that reminds him of Jim – for reality to hit him hard and burn all his hopes. 

There are other days when it’s hard to breathe. Time seems to never pass: everything is firm and static, nothing looks interesting enough to capture his interest. In those moments it’s impossible to not think about Jim and the void he left in his life, it’s impossible to not want to fill that space with heroin. Sometimes he wraps himself into his coat – as if that could help him hide the shame that such a desire makes him feel – and contacts a drug dealer, looking for the dose that for few hours could make everything more bearable.   
He never actually managed to buy anything. It’s not hard to figure out who is to blame.  
The thought of James Moriarty threatening every drug dealer in the city can’t leave his mind. It makes him feel loved and angry at the same time. 

There are nights and those are the worst hours. If he spends them without sleeping he can’t stop thinking about everything he has lost, if he sleeps is even worse, because in dreams Sherlock can’t control himself and what surrounds him, no matter how he tries.   
He’s forced to relive the same scene over and over. Every time Jim’s corpse is heavier in his arms.  
When he wakes up sweaty in a bed that is suddenly too large, he thanks and curse to not have a gun with him. He’s so desperate that he could shoot himself in the face just to hope to see Jim again. 

There are the days when he visits the graveyard and those are the strangest. Sherlock it’s not really sure he likes them, but every week he finds himself sitting on the grass and talking to himself. It’s stupid and foolish, but somehow it makes him feel better. At least for a while.

******

There aren’t any flowers on Jim’s grave.   
The gravestone is bare and naked, a cold black stone on which Sherlock can see his own reflection. Defences fully lowered, eyes wet with tears that he never manage to hold back fully and trembling lips: Sherlock can almost see and touch the void that Jim left behind him and it’s weird, because he never saw himself so vulnerable. He doesn’t like it.

Sherlock sighs, looks down to escape his own eyes that look at him from the surface of the stone and, trying to don’t think about how much he would like to trade places with his reflection, he sits down. His coat will stain, he thinks distractedly. 

“I went to the pool yesterday.” He looks around quickly and, seeing no one, he slides a cigarette out of his pocket. He lights it, inhales deeply and it’s only when the smoke has filled the lungs that he looks up, eyes meeting the name written in gold letters. “I don’t know why I did it: one minute I was walking aimlessly and after that I found myself in an abandoned building that smelled of chlorine.” A white puff leaves his lips. Sherlock inhales again. 

“I sat on the edge of the pool, but this time no one pushed me into the water. No one laughed, no one threatened to tear out my eyes with a tea spoon because “don’t you dare Sherlock Holmes, this suit costs more than your whole wardrobe together”. Those were simpler times. Days when Jim’s laugh was more crystalline and pure than water itself, a silver bell whose sound tasted like that innocence Moriarty never had. The name on the gravestone suddenly becomes blurry and somehow wet. Sherlock rubs his eyes. 

"I walked around the locker rooms. It was strange visiting them with all my clothes on.” Saying the last words his lips instantly raise up in a smile. One time Jim pushed him against the lockers to passionately make out with him like a stupid teenager. It was nice.   
He stays silent for a while. The smiles becomes forced and, when it leaves Sherlock’s face, his eyes are wet again. Sherlock rubs them with the back of his hand. 

“There isn’t a moment when I don’t want to go back and change what I did.” His gaze moves and on the tip of the cigarette and Sherlock absently watches the smoke wafting in the air of a windless day.

“I would let you live. I would make you suffer with the hope of hurting you the way your death did to me.” He whispers and saying so his voice breaks and tears wet his cheeks, because he never wanted to hurt someone like he wants to hurt Jim now, because he realizes that he would see Jim’s eyes becoming distant and dull rather than not seeing them at all, because it’s better to be a horrible, miserable person than feeling incomplete. 

"I know I could kill myself and make everything disappear, but…” He shakes his head and looks at the stone again, the ghost of a bitter laugh on his lips “I don’t think I want to.”  
“I don’t know if it’s because I still have something to live for or if I just hope that you’ll be able to come back to me even if I heard your heart stops under my fingertips.”

His visits to Jim’s grave last a cigarette. After it, Sherlock leaves without looking back, because he doesn’t like the self-pity in which collapses after a few minutes, because even in a desperate situation his subconscious wants to maintain an illusion of dignity and composure, because he doesn’t want to look so pathetic in front of Jim Moriarty, even if he’s dead. 

Sherlock almost finished his cigarette, but there are still many things to say.   
He would like to tell him that he misses him more than he missed heroin during his withdrawal.   
He would like to tell him that he just can’t do it anymore and he can’t even talk about it with John, because he wouldn’t understand.   
He would like to tell him that at the end he burnt his heart, although perhaps not in the way he had planned.  
He would like to tell him that le loved and still loves him even if he would like to make him suffer and that he’s sorry he never said it while he was still alive.   
He would like to tell him that he loved and still loves him now though would make him suffer again and he's sorry not telling never whispered while he was still alive.

He would like to say so many things but, seeing the name ‘SHERLOCK HOLMES’ written with gold letters on the black stone, only three are the words that leave his lips.

“I hate you.”


End file.
